Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Working Knowledge
Business Research for Business Leaders
  • Browse All Articles
  • Popular Articles
  • Cold Call Podcast
  • Managing the Future of Work Podcast
  • About Us
  • Book
  • Leadership
  • Marketing
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Entrepreneurship
  • All Topics...
  • Topics
    • COVID-19
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Finance
    • Gender
    • Globalization
    • Leadership
    • Management
    • Negotiation
    • Social Enterprise
    • Strategy
  • Sections
    • Book
    • Podcasts
    • Managing the Future of Work Podcast
    • HBS Case
    • In Practice
    • Lessons from the Classroom
    • Op-Ed
    • Research & Ideas
    • Research Event
    • Sharpening Your Skills
    • What Do You Think?
    • Working Paper Summaries
  • Browse All
    Voting Trusts and Antitrust: Rethinking the Role of Shareholder Rights and Private Litigation in Public Regulation, 1880s to 1930s
    27 May 2019Working Paper Summaries

    Voting Trusts and Antitrust: Rethinking the Role of Shareholder Rights and Private Litigation in Public Regulation, 1880s to 1930s

    by Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Laura Phillips Sawyer
    Historically, judges were reluctant to intervene in corporations’ internal affairs and displayed a particular wariness of shareholders’ derivative suits. By the end of the 19th century, however, they had begun to revise their views and to see shareholders’ private actions as useful checks on economic concentration.
    LinkedIn
    Email

    Author Abstract

    Scholars have long recognized that the states’ authority to charter corporations bolstered their antitrust powers in ways that were not available to the federal government. But they have also argued that the growth of large-scale enterprises operating in national and even international markets forced states to stop prosecuting monopolistic combinations out of fear of doing serious damage to their domestic economies. Our paper has revised this conventional view by focusing attention on the lawsuits that minority shareholders brought against their own companies in state courts of law and equity, especially suits that challenged the anticompetitive use of voting trusts. Historically judges had been reluctant to intervene in corporations’ internal affairs and had displayed a particular wariness of shareholders’ private actions. By the end of the 19th century, however, they had begun to revise their views and to see shareholders’ private actions as useful checks on economic concentration. Although the balance between judges’ suspicion of and support for shareholders’ activism shifted back and forth over time, the long-run effect was to make devices like voting trusts unsuitable for the purposes of economic concentration.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: May 2019
    • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #19-109
    • Faculty Unit(s): Business, Government and International Economy
      Trending
        • 13 May 2022
        • Research & Ideas

        Company Reviews on Glassdoor: Petty Complaints or Signs of Potential Misconduct?

        • 13 Aug 2021
        • Research & Ideas

        Managers, Here’s How to Bond with New Hires Remotely

        • 12 May 2022
        • Book

        Why Digital Is a State of Mind, Not Just a Skill Set

        • 09 Dec 2019
        • Research & Ideas

        Identify Great Customers from Their First Purchase

        • 24 Mar 2022
        • Research & Ideas

        Rituals at Work: Teams That Play Together Stay Together

    Find Related Articles
    • Business History
    • Business and Shareholder Relations

    Sign up for our weekly newsletter

    Interested in improving your business? Learn about fresh research and ideas from Harvard Business School faculty.
    ǁ
    Campus Map
    Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
    Baker Library | Bloomberg Center
    Soldiers Field
    Boston, MA 02163
    Email: Editor-in-Chief
    →Map & Directions
    →More Contact Information
    • Make a Gift
    • Site Map
    • Jobs
    • Harvard University
    • Trademarks
    • Policies
    • Digital Accessibility
    Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College